


Tramtris

by HSavinien



Series: Around the Table [1]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, M/M, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-31
Updated: 2008-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tramtris means trouble for his cousin Dinadan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tramtris

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to play with the different variations on Tristan/Tristram's name but from an observer's perspective. Tramtris was what he called himself in "disguise" at King Mark's court when he was having it off with Isolde/Yseult/etc., Mark's wife.

Dinadan likes it when Cousin Tristan comes to visit. He is six months Din’s senior, but since Breu and Dan are six and four years older than Din, Tristan almost counts as his age. Tristan knows good games and thinks of good places to go exploring.  Sometimes, though, Father says it is Tristan come to visit and he’s wrong.

Tramtris is scarier than Tristan and he always means mischief, and usually a hiding from Father by the end of the visit.  Din was eight before he figured out that Tramtris was the same person as Tristan.

When Din is ten, he begins training with Father’s arms-master and stands watches every other night with one of the guards.  Tramtris ends up setting a sow on fire and it lights the hencoop before it can be caught and extinguished.

Three months after Din’s thirteenth birthday, Tristan’s father pays a formal visit to Sir Brunor.  Father sends Din and Tris out to go hunt wild hens for supper.  As they collect bows from the armoury, Din sees the glint in his cousin’s eye and oh, it is not Tris at all.

Tramtris waits until they’ve left the open ground around the keep walls and presses Din against a tree, bright blue eyes glinting with impishness.

“God be with you in your fourteenth year, sweet cousin.”

“And you,” Din says, slowly, because if he does not speak slow, he will start to stammer.  “What remains of it.”  He is not certain what will happen next, but something must.  There is a tension in the air between them that crackles like sparks.

Tramtris smiles, sweetly, the afternoon sun haloing his tawny hair around his head.  Then he leans close and kisses Din, hard and sharp and sudden as a blow.  Din’s fist clicks Tram’s teeth shut and they both return bloody-nosed, black of eye, and bird-less.  Their fathers roar and give them a whipping and set them on night watches for the rest of the visit.  Also, they have no supper, which would make Din whine if he were still a child.  But he’s not, so he steals cold meat and bread and a few turnips and stuffs them down his tunic before watch.  He shares with Tram.

In his fifteenth year, Dinadan garners permission from his father to spend a week fishing on a lake in their northern holdings and invites Tris along.  He wrestles with Tris on the stony beach until he pins him.  Having no hands free, Din wipes brown hair out of his eyes against his shoulder, then bends down and kisses Tris.  Tris’s mouth opens under his and everything goes hot, especially Din’s cheeks.  There are no black eyes, but enough fish to satisfy the cook.

***

Dinadan never doubts that he loves Tristan (whether he’s Tramtris or not), nor that Tristan loves him.  The blather that the poets spout, though, ‘tis not theirs. Heated, rough-and-tumble and comradely...  His heart does not break over Isolde.  It’s not a problem for jealousy.


End file.
